Mishkin
Berteig - Just Some Random Geek.
My full name is Mishkin Ben-Garry Vyordan Berteig. I have another home page. About Me
20040721: I've been learning to program my Zire using J2ME, specifically the CLDC 1.1 and MIDP 2.0 specs. I'm working on some neet user interface stuff. It's fun to work on such a small device. Eventually, I plan to write some software for sale... but it's going to be a little while yet before it's ready.
Cal has made great progress in the server administration work he's doing. He's put the following domains onto my OpenBSD box already: rodya.com, badasht.com, poemotion.com and encyclofile.com. Hopefully today he finishes up with the qmail installation and then we can start moving some of my more important domains over, and then finally move the dns service over.
I bought several more DVDs over the last couple days: The Mask of Zorro, The Dark Crystal, xXx, The Gods Must Be Crazy, The Godfather (Collection), Mars Attacks, Ballistic Ecks vs. Sever, and Master and Commander the Far Side of the World.
20040717: Cal has been here for a couple of days. It has been absolutely fantastic having him working for me. Some small things he's already done: enter all my contacts into my new Zire 72, pack up all my textbooks that I don't use regularly, help with some heavy gardening, and started to catalogue my DVDs. He's also working on learning OpenBSD, qmail, SpamAssassin, Apache, and networking. He's going to help me move all my server stuff from FreeBSD to OpenBSD. That's his main task for the summer. I'm thinking about getting him a low end computer to use as a "scratch" or "test" system - but maybe not.
I've been slowly working on building a robot with Justice. We started with taking some things apart: an old broken CD ROM drive, an old ink jet printer, then playing with the motors a little. Next I'm going to teach him about gearing using Lego Technic. He's already started playing with it himself a little. Slashdot recently ran a story about some on-demand web fabrication for mechanical and electronics. I haven't ordered anything yet, but the sites look really cool.
My week of working for TIAA-CREF was very interesting. I made some good suggestions to them, and they seemed appreciative. We'll see if it leads to more work or not.
20040714: On Sunday I purchased a palmOne Zire 72. It's a nice machine. It has several things that I was looking for in a PDA: a good processor (300MHz), an SD slot, Bluetooth, decent resolution color screen (320x320), can play mp3's, has a basic camera built in, voice memo capabilities and a USB cable to connect/sync. The big down side is that it uses "Graffiti 2" which really sucks compared to the original Graffiti. Anyway, I'm very happy with my purchase. I downloaded the Java runtime for it, and I hope to start writing some simple apps for it.
Mom and Cal arrived today. Cal is going to work for me for the next month and a half. It should be interesting. I've got lots of stuff for him to do - mostly system administration.
20040713: The last few days have been great/crazy. I went to New York on Thursday. There's a company there called TIAA-CREF that does financial planning. A friend of Valerie Hart's, Paula Martin of Martin Training Associates, needed someone to be there to help with the technical side of some consulting she was doing there. So it was fun: I met Paula at Grand Central, track 17, and then we met another associate of her's, Ronia Kort. From there we went to get a bite to eat, and after that we went to the meeting. Unfortunately I didn't have time to get in touch with some of my friends in the area, but I hope to go back and have a chance to do that. Then as a follow-up, I went to Chicago yesterday for an all-day meeting with a vendor, EISI, who makes a product called NaviPlan. Anyway, it was a difficult day: I was up at 4:30am and I didn't get to sleep until after midnight. But the day was successful in that there has been more follow-up work. I hope there is more work because the people at TIAA-CREF seem really nice.
Verity has been having a little trouble sleeping without being held. She's just so darn snuggly, it's hard to put her down when she's sleeping. Melanie and I are gently trying to get her used to sleeping on her own again.
Haifa had a screaming fit last night. I got really upset and because of my travel exhaustion, I really wasn't up to handling her patiently. I was losing my patience with her a lot. After she settled down, I felt so bad about how I had treated her: angry words, some rough actions. So today I am fasting. I have to get my soul back in charge. Even though I was very tired, it was no excuse for losing my patience. I'm also going to say a whole bunch of prayers tonight - detachment and spiritual qualities are the things I'm going to be asking for.
20040706: Had a great/crazy/terrible weekend. I got strep throat on Friday. I haven't had a sore throat for over a decade since my tonsils were removed. This was a _bad_ one. My dad came on Thursday night. The visit was excellent. On Sunday night I got up enough energy to go to see Spider Man 2 with him. It was very nice. Justice's birthday on Friday and party on Saturday were both very difficult for me. I pretended well enough that people didn't know I was sick, but I couldn't eat anything either day, nor Sunday. Sunday a bunch of people came over to participate in a workshop given by my father on the use of the arts in the three core activities of the five year plan. It was a great workshop (I mostly listened). My mom also was over Sunday evening and Monday. On Monday, Travis and Shabnam also visited. We spent the afternoon looking at my dad's art, listening to some of my mom's poetry, my music, and Travis' music too.
I am a Baha'i. The Baha'i Faith was founded by Baha'u'llah. Baha'is believe that Christ has returned, and that the world is going through a tumultuous collective adolescence in preparation for maturity: World peace is not only possible, it is inevitable.
I am a husband to Melanie Andersen, and I am a father to Justice and Haifa and Verity. I love to spend time with all of them. Haifa is learning to read, Justice is learning Arabic, and Melanie and I are learning about home design.
I am an independent consultant with over 10 years of professional object-oriented technology experience primarily in Objective-C and Java. I'm also doing C# and .NET work. Here is my resume.
I am a co-founder of Oomind. Oomind is a community education system. Oomind works on some community principles similar to those at work in Slashdot, Kuro5hin, and Wikipedia. Registered users can submit and rate Courselets, as well as submit, rate and answer quiz questions about Courselets. There are also facilities for instructors, recruiters and learners. Oomind is unfortunately suspended for the foreseeable future.
I also write electronic music, primarily using some freeware software called Buzz.
My favorite foods include Dim Sum at the Koi Palace, Sushi at Ino Sushi, and Persian at Yaas. Salmon is my favorite fish, and I no longer like Big Macs after reading "Fast Food Nation".
That logo at the top is my name "Mishkin" in very stylized Arabic calligraphy. I designed it myself.
I can be reached at mishkin@berteig.com if you feel like sending me something for some reason.
Older entries: October 2002, November 2002, December 2002, January 2003, February 2003, March 2003, April 2003, May 2003, June 2003, July 2003, August 2003, missed Sept., October 2003, November 2003, missed Dec., January 2004 , February 2004 , March 2004, missed Apr., May 2004, June 2004, August 2004, home
Top Sci-fi and Fantasy:
1. Ship of Magic (Robin Hobb)
2. Songmaster (Orson Scott Card)
3. The Real Story (Stephen R. Donaldson)
Top Software Development Books:
1. Agile Software Development (Alistair Cockburn)
2. Software Craftsmanship (Pete McBreen)
3. The Inmates are Running the Asylum (Alan Cooper)
Top Movies:
1. Run Lola Run (CA$) (with Franke Potente)
2. Strictly Ballroom (CA$) (by Baz Luhrmann)
3. Groundhog Day (CA$) (with Bill Murray and Andie MacDowell)
